What is Blockchain?

What is Blockchain?

Regarded by some people as the new internet, blockchain is an ingenious invention, created by a person or a group people known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. He is also regarded as the creator of the most popular cryptocurrency on the planet –bitcoin.

What does it have special?

To put it clear for everybody, a blockchain is basically a distributed database. Traditionally, a set of data is stored on a server or on a series of servers. With the blockchain, now data can be stored in a distributed way across all the hardware from the “block”.

As Alex Tapscott states in the book Blockchain Revolution, “The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.”

Simply put, by storing blocks of information that are the same across the entire network, it is impossible that a single entity can control the blockchain and also, it has no single point of failure.

The data contained in the blockchain is transparent and embedded within the network as a whole, meaning it is public. Also, it can’t be corrupted, because altering any unit of information from the blockchain would mean using a huge amount of hardware power to override the whole network.

The reason why blockchain technology had become so popular is that this new system promotes the idea of decentralization and equality. Also, the fact that it is basically a distributed database, means the information from the system cannot be lost, even though some computers from the system will break.

Also, cryptocurrencies that emerged in the last few years, like ethereum, brought with them new uses of the blockchain, not just for financial transaction processing. The blockchain technology could be used at a larger scale in the future if continuous improvements will be made.